The Missing Plot

Plot – that is something I have to work on. It’s essential to a story yet I don’t have one. What will be the plot?

I guess there is the plot of the author writing the story. She could complete the story or not. Or something could happen to her – like Chernobyl – that prevents her from completing the story. Of course, she could literally get drawn into the story, or the story’s characters could get drawn into her life. Or something else entirely. Fiction – yah, it’s pretty great that way.

What about the man, the toad and the alien? Should I nuke em? Do I want to write about the man with all the sores on his body? Or the lonely alien? Or the toad? What about the mushrooms I said I wanted to write about?

Do I have to choose my plot now or can I just start writing and see where I go, later, once I’m done my research?

I guess some sort of plot outline would be good.

I definitely like the author part. It’s easy to write and doesn’t require much imagination. This is important to me: I’m pretty ordinary and thinking up imaginative things is work.

So, I can keep the author. Maybe I should make her a comedian- an unconscious comedian; ie. an ordinary, over-privileged Westerner who thinks her depression is comparable to what people went through in Chernobyl? That would be cool!

The toad could be laughing his ass off at her and the man could be… really sad, really lost and with his life decimated, in comparison to her stupid laments about her suicidal mother.

Maybe a parallel would be drawn between the author and the character? Maybe I could make a point that happiness does not come from what you have so much as the people around you? Maybe I could make a point that only true friends bring you happiness and true friends are something that develops over time? Including friendship with ones’ self?

I wonder if I can fold the alien into the author, make them the same character somehow? What if the alien is sketchily drawn, so the reader can never really grasp her purpose, her background or identity? What if the alien is a representation of Woman? A group of people who’s uniqueness and identity is not really important to the group of people who, for the most part, control them; who’s backgrounds and history are not told and interrupted again and again, through marriage and name changes?

Woman has a purpose though: breeding. What if that’s the alien’s purpose, but like many lost, sad women, she doesn’t feel at home with that, doesn’t feel challenged by that since it’s something that just happens biologically and thus feels… half-existent, ephemeral… depressed, lonely… ?